Exterior view of the new Detroit Public Safety Headquarters in Detroit on Friday June 28, 2013. / Eric Seals/Detroit Free Press

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Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

A federal monitor says the Detroit Police Department has passed a new threshold in being 91% compliant with requirements involving excessive force and jail conditions. But he also cautioned that getting to 100% may prove to be the toughest part.

“With each step forward, the path becomes steeper. The most difficult challenges remain,” federal monitor Robert Warshaw wrote in his 15th quarterly report, filed today in U.S. District Court.

According to the report, which covers January through March, the department’s total compliance figure increased for the 15th consecutive reporting period, this time moving from 90% to 91%. The figure was at 29% when Warshaw took over in 2009, replacing former monitor Sheryl Robinson Wood, who was fired after text messages revealed she was having an inappropriate relationship with ex-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.

The Detroit Police Department came under federal oversight in 2003 following a series of Free Press stories that revealed numerous problems, including questionable shootings of civilians, slipshod shooting investigations and dragnet arrests at homicide scenes.

While the department has seen progress in recent years, Warshaw stressed that problems still persist. He noted, for example, that a requirement addressing the integrity of video documentation fell out of compliance in this reporting period.

Another requirement involving the documentation of prisoner injuries moved from being far from compliance in the last report to barely meeting the required standard. And two requirements addressing decontamination involving chemical spray and photographs of suspects’ injuries are at risk of slipping out of compliance.

“While we acknowledge the long road that brought us to this point — we must also articulate our concern with the fragility of the achievement and the ease with which it can slip away,” Warsaw wrote in his 176-page report. “ The devil, of course, is in the details — and the details make clear the fragile nature of compliance.”

The report also noted the city’s new police chief, James Craig, has a tough road ahead in inheriting these issues, not to mention the city’s crime problem.

“Such challenges are not new to the new chief, who must also address the problem of serious crime across the city,” Warshaw wrote. “But the goals of reducing crime and assuring constitutional policing can only complement one another. We expect the new chief to embrace this reality immediately, as nothing short of that will be acceptable.”